Re: The negative aspect of rewards
My main source for this isthis book.
By definition, a reward is given after a desirable action to encourage continuation of the action. Ideally, parents give a reward for say good grades hoping that the expectation of the reward forces the child to work as hard, or harder, than they used to. Does this happen? For some students, yes. For most students, however, the reward must increase to maintain the same level of effort. I’m sure many of us have had the experience of receiving a known reward, and then having the recipient say, “That’s all? That’s the same thing I got last time.” If the reward ceases, decreases, or even stays the same, the good action will be reduced or even eliminated.
Punishments are similar. By definition, punishments are given to discourage the continuation of a negative action. For example, bad grades followed by a spanking. For some students, this works. However, for many students (and criminals,) the punishment actually accomplishes one of two things: the student no longer cares about the punishment having experienced it and finding out it wasn’t as bad as they thought, or they become resentful and start increasing the negative action even though they were unlikely to do it in the first place.
Here’s an example from the above textbook. Three groups are given the task to fix radios. The first group must fix radios or pay a penalty for every radio they don’t fix in a given amount of time. The second group is given payment for each radio they fix. The third group is given a free choice whether they fix the radios or not.
In group 1, they started out fixing the radios. However, as time went by, they preferred to pay the fine rather than fix radios, thinking it was “too much effort.” The second group also began fixing the radios, but as time went by, stopped because they felt that their effort was worth more than what they were being paid. The third group…well, I’ll leave it for now, but let’s just say there’s a third option besides rewards and punishments.
Another interesting thing is that punishments actually result in an increase in the negative behavior when the punishment is eliminated. For example, if students are punished for staying up late, they will stay up extra late when their parents are out of town. In other words, the degree, amount and severity of the negative action is increased because of punishments. The same thing happens with rewards. If the reward stops, the action stops, even if the student did the action on their own accord previously.
Therefore, if we go back to the definition of punishments and rewards, the actual result tends to be the opposite: negative behaviors are increased because of punishments, and good behaviors are decreased or even eliminated by rewards.
Jobs, however, are a different story, although I do see many behaviors that would fit the above. For example, a person who feels they are getting paid less than they deserve would behave as above as though being punished. A person who goes through many jobs quickly at even the slightest hint of a raise may be displaying the reward behavior. However, I think that for most people, salary is secondary compared to the self-satisfaction in doing the job, and that most of us would prefer a job they are happy at rather than one with slightly higher pay but worse conditions.